


The Planting of Acorns

by confettiinmyhair



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Battle of Five Armies Fix-It, Fix-It, Healthy Polyamory, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-08
Updated: 2016-05-08
Packaged: 2018-06-07 01:41:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6780133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/confettiinmyhair/pseuds/confettiinmyhair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seven years after the Battle of the Five Armies, Bilbo is finally taken up on his standing offer of 4 o'clock tea, and journeys out of the Shire once more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Planting of Acorns

Bilbo was fifty-seven before he saw any of the Company again.

Messengers had brought letters through, from time to time, of course. Something from Moria here, another marked from Dale there, the twice-or-thrice yearly scrolls from Erebor itself - and Bilbo always would reply, would always insist that the messenger tide over for a meal or two and allow him to draft something up.  
  
There was a yearning, occasionally, to set right off with the messengers - lock up the house, tell his family not to presume him dead, that he would be home, and go to wander the mountains and vales once again, but there would be time, he always told himself.

There would be time.

“Go and plant your trees. See to your acorns,” Thorin had told him before the coronation, and so he would, and so he had.  
If nothing else, he was going to keep at it simply to spite Lobelia - having him assumed dead after a measly year and a half, getting Notions about What Should Be Done With The House!  
  
And, after all, Thorin had an entire kingdom under a mountain to manage. Bilbo was happy just to manage his little hill for the time being.  
His hill, his larder, and his garden. His garden, which was quickly becoming his pride. He’d subtly worked in all manner of seeds that he’d been gifted by the elves of Rivendell on his way home.

He’d taken to telling stories of his trip to the younger local hobbits, be they cousins or simply neighbors, while he worked away at weeding his vegetable patch. It was fun, reliving his adventures that way, trying to figure out ways not to make the scary portions so scary, and if it got under their parents’ skins, all the better.  
  
There was the most unusual letter, though, that came with Thorin’s early birthday wishes that year. (Many months early, the birthday wishes would always be. ‘I may be King Under The Mountain, burglar mine, but there is no reason that a birthday wish should ever arrive overdue,’ Thorin had written back when Bilbo had finally asked about it after the third year. And if Bilbo had blushed like a radish at the unusual endearment, he could only imagine it had been Thorin’s intent all along.)  
  
The unusual letter came with the same messenger, but was from Bofur. They’d enjoyed a lively, slightly more frequent correspondence - Bofur was not constantly inundated with the responsibilities of running an entire kingdom, after all.

_Master Baggins_ , the letter began, in something of a more careful hand than was usual,

_I hope that my letter, as well as the Spring itself, finds you in fine spirits.  
_

_(_ _I also hope that the gardening is already moving along as planned - I understand that the season has been unfavorable for the leafy greens so far, up this direction. Nothing dire, surely, but I do remember you were fussing about getting cabbages to seed, and have wondered.)_  
_Horticulture, though, is not the reason for my writing._  
  
_I wrote to warn ahead that I’ll be passing through sometime in late May. (I’ve got a repertoire of trinkets I mean to sell at some spring festivals and summer faires, and I mean to be passing through to Ered Luin for a small visit, and so thought I might check on you while I make my way. Tea is, I trust, still at 4?)_

Well, that was alright by Bilbo - many of his relatives kept an oddly respectful distance, and it would be nice to catch up with an old friend.

===

Late May it was, when he heard a familiar singing voice coming up the path. It took him a moment to place, as he was wiping dirt from his hands. The jaunty tune itself was one he’d never heard, but the lower Dwarvish tones it was sung in were unmistakable. Moments later, Bofur came into view, waving with one hand as he guided his pony’s reigns with the other.

Bilbo waved back, and walked down to open the gate for him.

===

The visit became something hedging on a week. Bofur had been through two spring festivals already, to say nothing of the trip itself, and was happy to spend a few days idling, sharing Bilbo’s store of pipeweed and poking about the seedlings in the garden.

“I still can’t believe you actually eat this,” he’d muttered quietly, toeing at one of the cabbages that were a few weeks away from harvesting.

“You eat it with other things,” Bilbo had laughed back. “I’m not just going to eat a head of cabbage by its lonesome.”

“Well, I don’t know that!” Bofur grumped back, shrugging wildly, and Bilbo had laughed again.

“If you come back through after your visit home, I’ll be happy to show you what summer cabbage tastes like in a good beef stew,” Bilbo shrugged right back.

“I may at that, Master Hobbit. I may at that.”  
  
===

Bilbo had known of Bofur’s trade during the Company’s quest, but he’d had no real inkling of Bofur’s actual skill in it.

When Bofur opened one of the packs on the second night that he was there to let Bilbo see what he’d brought along to sell, Bilbo was admittedly momentarily stunned.  
  
‘Trinkets’ was a broad understatement. There were quite basic, sturdy toys among the lot, things clearly meant to be everyday objects for infants to amuse themselves with, but there was also every manner of object inbetween, up to the most delicate-looking, intricate puzzle sculptures that would more accurately be described as fine art.  
  
Bilbo had furrowed his brow after an hour of trying one of the less-complicated puzzle sculptures, setting it aside, and standing up to put the kettle back on.

“Give up, then, eh?” Bofur laughed, and Bilbo could only nod.

“It does seem that I’m always going to be more adept with the riddles, yes.”

Something struck Bilbo, then, as he readied the tea in the mugs, and he considered his words carefully.

“What made you decide to take up toy-making, after all? I mean, you’ve never said much about your family.”

It took Bofur a long moment to answer, and he took a deep breath before he did.

“You mean, why toys, when I’ve got no children of my own?”

Bilbo nodded slowly back at that, and Bofur shrugged.

“Then no, I don’t have a family in the way that you mean, but I have a great deal of nieces, and nephews, and cousins, and I make things that delight them, and that delights me. I delight in knowing that the first time they figure out a puzzle box, they’ll try and figure out new tricks, and new shapes to form them into, and maybe they’ll grow up and come to love making beautiful things, and maybe it’ll help them never to lose that spark of curiosity.”

Well, that made more than enough sense, Bilbo could admit.

Even after that speech, Bilbo was surprised to find that Bofur was actually quite good at chess, and was in fact the first person who’d given him a real challenge at it in a number of years.

===

In fact, having Bofur about, even for a few days, brought about surprises even after they’d said their farewells.  
  
Bilbo hadn’t shared his home with anyone, really, since his parents had died. Relatives had never had real reason for extended stays, though he’d always kept his guest room at the ready.  
  
It had been odd, but pleasant, sharing the house with another person, to make meals with another person rather than simply for himself, and to answer questions about his little library, and to have someone genuinely stop and inspect the craftwork of his prized pewters and dishware who wasn’t actively trying to abscond with it.  
  
And yet, the summer wound on quietly. Bilbo enjoyed the lazy heat, and considered again taking up his quill to write the stories that the children always bothered him to tell.  
  
He considered how he might spend his 58th birthday, wondered if he might not wander back to Rivendell to pay Elrond a visit for the winter, and didn’t think too harshly of the fact that he’d made up a little travelling pack over the past few weeks. ‘Just in case’, he’d told himself.

===

Summer wound on quietly into the early parts of September, wound towards the first chill of the year, wound to Bilbo taking a final harvest from his gardens, to tying up the flower bushes under burlap for the year.

A week before his birthday, unannounced but clearly taking the offer Bilbo had made that spring, Bofur reappeared on the road over the hill, and unlocked the gate for himself.

Bilbo couldn’t even think to be annoyed by it, as he watched from the kitchen window.

===

If Bilbo’s cousins hadn’t been fond of the idea of him traipsing off with a wizard and pack of dwarves a few years prior, they were at least as much displeased at the thought of breaking bread with one at a meal.

It was a quiet backyard affair, with only some of the more pleasant family in hesitant attendance. It took a little bit, but the two kegs of ale Bofur had brought back with him from the mountains were enough to keep everyone civil, and the comments on the heavy, dark brew tended to be plenty, and favorable.

The feast went nearly to midnight, and two of his younger cousins even insisted on staying to help Bilbo get everything put back inside, even if he had meant to save the cleaning for morning.

It was only after everyone was gone, and Bilbo was readying himself for a cup of chamomile before bed, that Bofur quietly set something on the little kitchen table without a word.

The wrapping of the package - it seemed somewhat squared-off - was in fact a canvas slipcase dyed in stripes of maroon and ochre, with small brass fastenings.

“What’s this, then?” Bilbo asked. Bofur merely gestured at the package meaningfully as he took a seat at the table, and Bilbo took that as all the permission he needed.

He set both mugs of tea on the table, pulling out a chair for himself, and took the package in his hands, making quick work of the fastenings.

The box inside the slipcase was made of polished wood, and the etching on what seemed to be the leading edge was string of Cirth runes, only a few letters of which Bilbo really understood. He ran his thumb along the etching carefully, feeling the slight give three quarters of the way along, and looked back up.

“This is a puzzle box?”

At that, Bofur raised an eyebrow, relaxing back into his chair, and finally took the mug that Bilbo had set on the table for him.

Keeping his thumb in place, BIlbo felt around with his other hand, at the same pressure, and - there, along the back edge, the same sensation of a latch giving, this time accompanied by the noise of tiny hasps opening, and the lid popped up ever so slightly.

Bilbo set the box back on the table, and raised the lid gently until it was resting back against the table top.

Open, the flat box was a half-sized chess board, laid out in a sort of silvery wood that Bilbo could not recognize and a darker walnut that he could.

“There are catches on the interior corners for the pieces,” Bofur finally said, and Bilbo nodded without looking up, but set to work trying to find them.  
After a little fiddling, he figured out how to spring the thin panels of the board to find the storage compartments beneath.

The pieces were carved of the same two woods, and just as polished as the rest of the box. They had metal inlays for detailing (the same metal as the bag’s clasps and the box’s hinges), and some kind of clear stone chips for eyes.

When Bilbo finally looked up, gently shutting the inner panels and then the box itself, he was shaking his head.

“This is too extravagant,” he said quietly, and moved to shimmy the box back into the slipcover.

“Says the man with the mithril armor in his drawing room,” Bofur replied, raising his eyebrows, “so none of that nonsense. You’re formidable at the game, and I know you wish to at least see the elves again. Take them some culture, hey?”

Bilbo tilted his head in suspicion.

“How do you know I want to go see the elves, then?”

Bofur laughed at that, draining the dregs of his mug.

“You speak too fondly of their orchards, as though it were a rosy memory of childhood. And why not? With just yourself, the way would be quick enough.”

Bofur stood and placed his mug near the sink, then turned to comment, before heading to the guest room, “Though I mean to pass that way when I leave, you know. Certainly wouldn’t mind a companion on the road, were you so inclined.”

===

There hadn’t even been any hand-wringing this time around. Bilbo had paid his cousin Drogo for one of his ponies, and a little sum to look after the house and see that the garden didn’t become overrun, yes, but otherwise, there was little enough thought.

Bilbo took his sword down from over the fireplace, took his mithril shirt from its stand, took up the pack he’d made up that summer, and he and Bofur were off on the road to the Last Homely House once more.

===

They entered Rivendell before November could truly take hold, and were welcomed as old friends, unannounced as they’d chosen to come. Bilbo had determined to winter there, with Elrond’s leave, and Bofur had seen no reason not to dawdle, saw no reason not to wait for the height of winter to pass before continuing on.

Bilbo learned much of hardier winter plants and what parts of them might be used in cooking from the elves who tended the orchards, and Bofur found a friendly group among the smiths who were happy enough to share little trade secrets with a fellow crafter.

===

The kitchen elves were curious about Bilbo’s talk of Yule, and so, as December drew to its close, it was time for another feast, this time with all the great skill of the cooks of Rivendell at his disposal.

Elrond himself even took some time from his business to come down to the long table that had been set, sitting among all the others as opposed to taking his place at the head of the table, which struck Bilbo - it was apparent that Bilbo’s talk of a masterless holiday had not fallen on deaf ears.

There was enough mulled wine to pass that even the more skeptical elves were willing to try the simple paper crowns on. Many of them seemed quite pleased with the way he’d decided the roast chickens should be dressed and seasoned, and though they found the mashed potatoes to be unfamiliar to the point of oddity, they mostly agreed that the flavor was agreeable.

And there was singing, such singing. As the wine and ales began to flow more freely, any number of instruments were brought out to accompany the tunes that Bilbo had taught them - small harps, pan flutes, and even Bofur on his clarinet.

There were no small presents exchanged, really - Bilbo had explained the practice, but felt that a Yule at Rivendell and the company of friendly folk at a good meal was all the present he could reasonably ask for.

It was well past midnight and halfway on to dawn when he was finally on his way back to his borrowed room, Bofur stumbling along with him, drunkenly attempting to make riddles and instead straying into the territory of truly bad puns. (Bilbo, being equally as drunk, was laughing at them nonetheless as they passed their flagon of wine back and forth.)

Bofur leaned up against the wall of the corridor when they made it to Bilbo’s room, chuckling gently as Bilbo made four different attempts to work the latch open with his pipe still in his hand. Before the fifth try, Bilbo planted the stem firmly between his teeth, at last, and made a double-handed attempt, finally springing the door open.

“Greatest burglar east of - wast of - west of the damn Brandywine, me,” he laughed, taking a long draw on the pipe as he stood in the doorway.

Bofur offered the flagon again, and Bilbo regarded it blearily for a moment before accepting.

“I like this. This Yule of yours. Our winter festival is much… longer, and more involved, and I’m sorry to be missing it, but I like this. A feast of friends,” the dwarf smiled, and Bilbo laughed, raising the flagon carefully, missing his own mouth on the first try.  
“You should come along, you know,” Bofur said quietly as Bilbo drank. Bilbo narrowed his eyes in concentration as he wiped the back of his hand over his mouth..

"Beg pardon?”

“When I go,” Bofur sighed, eyes rolling, “you should carry on with me. I mean, you can do as you please, you can stay, or you can go back to Hobbiton, but, oh. You’d be welcomed so heartily, and… and it’s hardly a secret how fond of you Thorin is. He’d welcome any visit from you.”

Bilbo raised his eyebrows, the words falling from his mouth on another exhale of smoke before he could even think to stop.

“And what about you, Master Dwarf?”

Bofur regarded him carefully for a moment, and nodded, smiling softly.

“Aye. I’m fond of you as well, Master Hobbit.”

And that was how, on the second day of Bilbo’s fifty-ninth yuletide, two hours before dawn, he came to be checking three times that he’d really, truly managed to get the door shut behind himself before falling into bed with someone for the first time in over a decade.

===

Not much more than kissing could even have precisely be said to have happened that night - the frank truth being that they were simply too drunk.

They nonetheless fell asleep naked with far too many blankets heaped on, giggling quietly as they struggled to keep each other’s hair out of their mouths, and Bilbo drifted off tracing his fingers along the tattoos that ran down the sides of Bofur’s torso. Bofur, for his part, was quietly singing one of Bilbo’s Yule songs in some sort of crude Dwarvish translation.

The morning - or, perhaps, early afternoon, as the brightness of the sun suggested - was stunningly comfortable. Bilbo did not feel ill in any appreciable way, which was somewhat surprising, and slowly realized that Bofur was spooning him from behind, with an arm slung over his waist.

He lazed there for perhaps a half-hour before he lifted Bofur’s arm enough to wiggle out from under the covers, though did his best to otherwise move without disturbing the still-sleeping dwarf.

Bilbo washed in the basin at the side of the room and found fresh clothes as quietly as possible, and got out into the corridor with considerably less difficulty than he had the night before.

Rivendell was full of much more noise and activity than he tended to associate with the second day of Yule, but Bilbo felt wonderfully at ease nonetheless.

After a nice little breakfast - afternoon tea, perhaps, more accurately - Bilbo wandered up to one of the secondary libraries to ask the curating elf about bookbindings. He was feeling that urge to get at the memoirs again, and had a notion about just how he wanted his own folio to look.

===

As night fell, Bilbo made his way back down to the kitchens, not wanting to miss supper.

Bilbo took a free seat and began putting food on the empty plate from the dishes in the middle of the table.

With a good bite of dinner roll already taken care of, he glanced up and down the table. He spotted Bofur a few seats along across the table, and nodded as he caught his eye. Bofur merely waggled his eyebrows and grinned before turning back to his conversation with one of the smiths.

Considering the situation as he ate, Bilbo found himself genuinely wondering about what might happen if he followed Bofur back to Erebor.

===

The next few days passed amicably, mostly with Bilbo spending his waking hours in the library, learning how to sew parchment sheaves into a proper book.

He saw Bofur at meals, and they shared a pipe in the courtyard in the evenings, but nothing happened like the first night of Yule, really.

On the sixth day, though, it was Bilbo who finally broached the subject, his gaze fixed on the clear view of the stars above as he spoke, breaking the lull in their conversation.

“Did you mean it?”

“Beg pardon?” Bofur asked after a moment, and Bilbo shrugged gently.

“The other night. That night. Yule. You said I should come with you back to Erebor, and you seemed… unbothered by the fact that I might be going for Thorin as well as for you. So, was that the wine, or did you mean it?”  
  
There was a long pause, and Bilbo could hear the light crackling of Bofur’s pipe before he answered.

“It was the wine, but I did mean it. I think you should do whatever pleases you, though, and not worry so much about the rest of us.”

Bilbo nodded.

“And you’re not worried about how Thorin might react to… you know. This?”

Bofur made a pensive sound that moved into his actual response.

“That sounds like you might be the one worrying, Master Baggins.”

Bilbo made a pensive sound of his own, at that.

“I do. Am, I mean, to an extent. But I do also know that he wished me to go and live and be my own person for a time - ‘plant your acorns’ was the phrase - and I don’t see why this wouldn’t count.”

Bofur actually snorted at that.

“So I’m meant to be a sowing of the oats, then?”

Bilbo finally looked over, read the mock-offended expression he found on Bofur’s face, and chuckled softly back.

“No, not precisely. But I do have feelings for you, and if he finds that too scandalous, then I may simply remind him of his own words. If that’s not enough, then I’ve no need of it.”

Bofur cocked his head skeptically.

“You can’t possibly feel so flippantly.”

“No,” Bilbo agreed, “but if he feels so strongly about me living for myself, then he’ll be able to accept it.”

They were quiet for a moment, and Bofur sniffed as he tapped his pipe out against the bench.

“I don’t know how things work in the shire, but when you walk under the mountains, things tend to become rather… rather more communal than not.”

“Meaning?”

Bofur shrugged.

“In the simplest of terms, my mother - the word translates loosely as mother, but that’s not the point - was married to three different people, all at once. I have what I would consider five siblings, even if three of them came from a different pair than I did. And you can put the expression away, thank you, because it’s fairly common. Less so among the royal lines, but even then, it’s still not unheard of.”

“You’re saying that he’d be unbothered?” Bilbo asked, slowly.

“I’m saying that you’ll never know if you don’t ask.”

===

It was another two nights before they found themselves well and truly alone again. It was in Bofur’s room this time, as Bilbo had come by after supper to show him the completed, if blank, book that he’d created for his manuscript.

They were sharing a pipe at the window, looking out at the stars again, and it was again Bilbo who broached the subject.

“When do you plan to leave?” he asked, quietly.

Bofur shrugged noncommittally.

“Week and a half, maybe two. The worst of the storms in the mountain passes are generally over by mid-January,” he said, pausing before continuing on. “I’m not forcing you to make any decisions, you know.”

With a slow nod, Bilbo grinned back.

“I do know, but I’ve made a choice anyhow. I think I’d like to see what Erebor looks like, truly restored to its glory.”

For a long moment, Bofur simply gazed at him curiously. The dwarf shook his head, smiling as he set his pipe on the windowsill, and the next thing Bilbo knew, Bofur’s mouth was on his with a gentle insistence. Bilbo could think of nothing but to yield.

They stayed like that, leant against the windowsill, until it lead in turn to Bofur pulling Bilbo’s jacket from his shoulders and crowding him against the wall, leading to their hands sliding under each other’s clothes.

How any of it led to Bofur being the one writhing under him on the bed, Bilbo honestly couldn’t be sure.

Even if Bilbo was no blushing virgin, the experience was vastly different from practically all of his prior encounters.

He was more used to being the receptive partner, but this was good, too. Very good.

He was also used to quiet, leisurely encounters that were nonetheless underpinned by a sort of over-efficient practicality.

This was anything but, and yet it came as no surprise that Bofur would approach this as he did all other areas of life: boisterously.

The dwarf was noisy, given to deep moaning as they progressed, clutching at Bilbo’s shoulders and moving with his thrusts. For his part, Bilbo was content to keep a steady grip on Bofur’s hips and keep the nice, easy pace that seemed to be working best for them both.

Bofur leaned up to kiss him, pulling him in and rolling them as he did. Bilbo groaned against his mouth at the new angle. Bofur’s hands were pressed to Bilbo’s chest as he moved, then, almost painfully slowly. Bilbo kept his hands on Bofur’s thighs as he sped up, and bit his own bottom lip as he tried not to finish so quickly as he suddenly felt he might.

He moved a hand to wrap around Bofur’s cock, who practically whined in response. Bofur picked up the pace, faster and faster, and Bilbo’s only real warning that the end was nigh was a throaty, broken little plea in dwarvish that he couldn’t quite pick out.

Bofur kept moving through it all, his whimpering segueing into what Bilbo recognized vaguely as swearing, until Bilbo finished as well, hands clutching at Bofur’s hip and lower back.

===

They laid in a bit of a heap for a while afterwards, content and sated. Bilbo let Bofur run his fingers through his hair simply because it felt nice, until he was finally overcome with the need to clean himself off.

He took Bofur’s hand and pressed a kiss to his palm as he made to stand up, blinking as he looked about for the basin.

“Next to the door,” Bofur mumbled, and Bilbo could hear the grin in his voice.

He splashed himself off, wiped down with one of the cloths, and then shuffled straight back to the bed to get warm again, only then realizing that they’d left the windows open to the cool winter air. He detoured to close it, and sighed as he sat back down on the mattress.

“Pretty sure the whole courtyard just got an earful.”

Bofur shrugged at that. “Can’t undo what’s done, nor would I.”

Bilbo chuckled at that and laid down, stretching out next to him.

A week and a half, maybe two. He could live with that.

===

They passed through Dale as spring was creeping over the land, and the change from when Bilbo had left for the Shire was remarkable. The town was still getting its legs, but it was already bustling with all manner of trade.

Bard was away on business when they arrived, which was disappointing - BIlbo had quite been looking forward to saying hello as they passed through. A few of the dwarves in the marketplace recognized Bofur straight away, and perhaps half of those dwarves recognized Bilbo as they took notice of him.

Bofur asked one of the merchants, for a little bronze coin, to send a bird up the mountain - he knew that word of Bilbo’s impending arrival would be considered far preferable to any sort of surprise.

It took an hour to make their way from Dale to the main hall of the mountain, which Bilbo knew would only bring them into home stretch; making their way to quarters and then moving on to the royal halls would be almost another hour entirely.

Or it would have, certainly.

Two dwarves that Bilbo did not recognize (but whom Bofur seemed to) approached them as they made their way into the entrance of the hall, to take their ponies, and to deliver a message.

“Our Majesty requests your presence immediately,” intoned the seemingly younger dwarf, bowing deeply.

Bofur nodded back, and grinned at Bilbo. “I’ll be seeing you later on, then?”

“What, are you not coming?” Bilbo asked, brow furrowing in confusion.

The young dwarf spoke again.

“If you please, sir, Master Bofur’s chambers are already set, as he left them, though we are still readying yours,” and, turning his attention directly to Bofur, “though His Majesty does request your presence once you have refreshed yourself from the trip.”  
Bofur raised his eyebrows at Bilbo, grinning, making a shooing gesture. “Go see to your matters, Master Baggins, I can handle myself.”

===

Bilbo had last seen Erebor mid-restoration, and was doing his best not to gape at the surprising splendor with which it now all stood. It smelled as clean as any mountain domain could be said to, and the torches and clever little paths for outside light had all the vast marble work positively gleaming.

He recognized certain faces with a nod as they passed along the way. Bilbo hadn’t allowed anyone to take his pack, and fiddled nervously with the straps whenever he felt too curiously regarded.

That walk down to the royal wing was longer than he seemed to remember, and was surprised when the attendant took him past the doors that he knew to lead to the throne room.

“I’m sorry, are you sure-”

The young dwarf nodded, but did not turn as he spoke.

“Yes, sir. I was instructed to take you into the study.”

Study? Well, apparently there were rooms Bilbo had yet to explore properly.

Taking a left down a smaller corridor, the attendant showed him to the second door down, bowing to it deeply once again.

“Uh. Thank you,” Bilbo said, and with a nod, the young dwarf was off again.

Bilbo turned, breathed deeply, and tapped politely at the door.

“Come!” sounded a deep shout from within, and Bilbo had to steady himself for just a moment - he’d missed that voice more than he had imagined.

He opened the latch, and pushed - the door was somewhat heavier than it looked, but opened smoothly enough.

Bilbo had to admit that the sight of Thorin behind a desk, arranging a stack of parchments, seemed wildly incongruous, though he knew that royal duties surely involved practical matters from time to time.  
  
The dwarf’s eyes lit up as Bilbo stepped inside, and he stood, crossing the room.

“I’d thought you’d be announced properly, forgive me.”

Bilbo did laugh at that, fiddling with the straps on his bag again.

“You hardly need to stand on pretense with me, you know.”

Slowly, Thorin nodded at that, and Bilbo watched his expression soften gradually, a small smile on his lips now as he closed the distance between them.

Thorin raised a hand and gently, ever so gently, set it against Bilbo’s cheek, forgetting even the open door for a moment.

“You have been dearly missed, you know.”

Bilbo could feel the intensity of his own blush, but brought his arms up around Thorin’s neck to claim a kiss.

It didn’t move very far past that; Thorin might forget himself in front of an open door for a few minutes, but closer intimacy… there would be a time, and a place, and this would not be it.

They moved apart after a few minutes, though. Thorin caught one of Bilbo’s hands and raised it to press a kiss to his knuckles, smiling openly.

He gestured to a door on the far end of the room, between two little book alcoves.

“My chambers are through there. I know yours are not yet ready. I’m… there are matters I have to attend, just for a few hours. I’d have prepared better if I’d had more warning of your arrival, but you can freshen up, or rest, as it pleases you.”

Bilbo blushed more deeply at that, shuffling his feet.

“I should have thought, but didn’t think messages would manage to arrive much further ahead of us.”

“I’m not angry, you know,” Thorin said, that soft smile returning. “I’d not thought to see you quite so soon. I’d had designs on journeying out to surprise you for your sixtieth, but it seems you beat me to the punch. So for now, I will finish my work, and then I will be at your disposal.”

“After I clean up, I think I might have a look around. See what you’ve done with the place,” Bilbo nodded back.

Thorin nodded back, lowering his voice.

“I’ll come and find you when I’m finished, then, shall I?”

===

Thorin’s chambers were fairly simple affairs - not spartan, by any means, but hardly indicative of the gold-lust that had once so plagued him. (Bilbo thought with heavy guilt of the ring in his waistcoat pocket, but pushed it down immediately. He was becoming quite good at doing so, and hadn’t even used the ring since he’d left with Bofur… and yet, it had almost never been more than a few feet away.)

He pushed those thoughts aside again, and took his pack off, stooping to pull fresh clothing out from the middle of everything.

The little washroom off the bedroom was one of the better-appointed ones Bilbo had seen since Rivendell. There was a tub that seemed to be plumbed, and though Bilbo was eager to get out and explore, he was equally aware of the fact that he’d last bathed - if it could be called so - three days prior in a frigid stream. _As it pleases me, indeed_ , he thought to himself, and set to pulling off his travel-worn clothes as he peered curiously at the spigot mechanism at the head of the tub.

It was nearly an hour later that he finally dragged himself from the bath to dry off, afraid that if he lingered any longer in the hot water, he was likely to doze off and drown.

The feeling of fresh clothing was just as heavenly, and his first thought after his belonging were repacked was to wonder whether the kitchens were still kept in the same place.

No time like the present to find out, he supposed.

===

The kitchens were, indeed, in the same place as before, and it was with a handful of scones and a skein of wine that Bilbo set back off, walking at a leisurely pace as he admired the restoration the kingdom had undergone in such a relatively short amount of time.

He made his way up to the main atriums slowly, and was struck immediately by simply how open and airy the chambers now seemed, compared to the previous clutter of both dragon-ruination and the treasure hoard that had been kept there at the time.

It was odd to say, but even with the reflective pallor of the gold cleared away, it also seemed brighter somehow, and rather bustling with life. Dwarves of every description imaginable made their ways up and down the seemingly endless stairs, none of them paying any more than vague curiosity to the hobbit among them.

The Gallery of Kings was the greatest shock, though. Where every other place in the halls that he had seen so far had seen dramatic refurbishments, the hardened river of gold with which they had attempted to trap Smaug remained the same as the day he’d left for the Shire.

“It’s a reminder,” sounded a voice behind him, and Bilbo shook himself from his thoughts.

Dwalin, clearly fresh from the smithy, was grinning at him from a few feet away, and Bilbo found himself laughing easily as they bumped forearms in a customary hand-clasp greeting. Bilbo offered the wine skein, which Dwalin declined.

“I’ll need to get back, thank you, though. Thought I’d come up and see for myself. We were merely expecting word of your goings on, not to have you stepping over the threshold before any of us had a chance to take you up on that offer of tea.”

Bilbo shrugged at that. “Bofur had plenty of my tea before we set off, so I wouldn’t worry too much about any ill portents, eh?”

With a belly laugh, Dwalin nodded.

“Excellent-good.”

“A reminder?” asked Bilbo, drawing the conversation back to the gold-marred hall before them.

“Ah,” Dwalin nodded. “I can’t say for sure what happened. None of us can… and yet Thorin says that it was where his madness broke. The metaphors get a touch odd, so I’ll let you ask him yourself, but aye. This’ll remain, no matter what else is restored.”

Bilbo nodded, casting another long glance at the hall, and Dwalin clapped him on the shoulder again.

“You’ve never seen a smithy in full swing when it’s not part of a ramshackle and…” he gestured at the hall again, “foolhardy plan, have you?”  
With a mere shake of the head, Bilbo demurred.

“You wanna have a look around while I’m on the way back to the shop?”

The great forges were a sight to behold now. The main furnaces looked positively brand-new, and hundreds of dwarves moved back and forth along the floor, keeping the whole operation running ceaselessly smooth.

There were any number of smaller kilns in any of the little side-shops, which Bilbo could have spent a week inspecting without seeing the end of. He’d never actually seen ceramics and china being made, even back in the Shire, and so made a note to come back and ask later, should they be willing to show him.

Dwalin gestured further down than he seemed to mean to go, nodding as he spoke, “If you keep going down past the jewel-cutters, you get into the ornament crafters and the wood workers and the cloth-makers. Got to keep them further away from the fires, or sometimes there’s problems with the air gettin’ too dry and times like those, you don’t even need a proper spark to send the whole room down in a blaze.”  
  
Peering over Dwalin’s shoulder into the workshop behind him, Bilbo smiled.

“Whitesmithing?” he asked. He supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised - everyone had a specialty, and he supposed that not everyone fancied forging weaponry, no matter how many tattoos they had on their face.

Dwalin smiled back with a nod.

“Pewters are a favorite. I admit, I miss detailing work, but… I crave the open air too often to do much but basic forging, these days.”

They bid each other good afternoon, then, and Bilbo did wander down to the fiber shops after all.

It struck him again that he was always so shocked that dwarves took pride in more refined workings, even in light of the intricate and delicate work that Bofur had shown him this past summer. Indeed, it had also never occurred to him that the cloaks they’d all had on their journey were dwarf-made as opposed to something that had been traded for. It struck him that he was rather dense for it, too - why would a people who took such pride in their own crafting do anything but craft their own basic supplies?

But this was not all heavy cloakwork, nor even armor. He was shown a bolt of fabric being woven that was little more than a shimmer in the air. This particular workshop was dedicated to all manner of similar fabrics, and the embroidery and dressing thereof.

It was a kind of magic in and of itself, he thought to himself as he found a corner to simply sit down and watch.

He could tell that the weavers were joking among each other as they worked, and though he couldn’t pick out more than the odd word every now and again, there was something very soothing about it all. Their own style of dress was unusual to what he’d come to expect from dwarves, but then he supposed that comfortable clothes were going to be quite different from the heavier armor and the travelling clothes he associated with the dwarves of the Company, and understandably rather different than Thorin’s royal attires.

He’d honestly assumed that flowing, lighter fabrics might be reserved for important feasts and holidays, or were limited to textile workers themselves, but was slowly getting the idea that he should let go of certain presumptions in that quarter.

He watched for nearly an hour and a half, until a rumbling of his stomach reminded him that he’d not had a proper meal since breakfast.

As he stood, he cleared his throat quietly, and spoke only loudly enough to be heard, “Thank you for letting me watch. Your work is beautiful.”  
He noticed that one of the younger weavers seemingly translated that to one of the older embroiderers, and he wondered, not for the first time, if it might still be considered taboo for him to try and learn Khuzdul.

===

'Supper’ was not a strictly observed mealtime across all of Erebor - the smiths and craft workers tended to work on their own schedules as necessary - but certainly, the kitchen prepared meals at regular intervals.

The same messenger from earlier that afternoon intercepted Bilbo on the his way down the staircases in the atrium, and for as momentarily annoyed as Bilbo felt, he let himself be led along once again, persuaded solely by the promise that there would be dinner where they were going.

It was a different route, this time, but they came to the same place after all - it was a second, perhaps better-hidden, entry into Thorin’s chambers. He hesitated to voice his suspicion to the messenger, but Bilbo wondered whether this was Thorin’s subtle way of showing him all the hidden ways of the city, little by little.

The messenger showed Bilbo how to work the door’s catch, and bowed away, scurrying off before Bilbo could think to finally ask his name.

Bilbo tripped the catch on the door and slipped inside, pulling the stone panel shut behind himself gently.

Food was indeed laid out on the low table between a set of divans, though Bilbo seemed to be alone in the room. After a moment of hesitation, he crossed the room, sat on one of the couches, and pulled one of the plates from the center of the table closer to himself, and began slowly snacking on a sort of cheese-filled dumpling as he looked more closely about the room than he had earlier.

He noticed a light-shaft hewn in one of the walls towards the ceiling, and noticed the late-afternoon light filtering down through it resting on a small potted ivy of some sort on a side table.

A little bit of life in all this rock - Bilbo couldn’t help but grin at that.

There was movement in the inner chamber, and Thorin emerged in significantly more casual dress than he’d had on earlier in the day - simple, loose gray trousers and a blue woolen shirt, and Bilbo noticed that he was barefoot now, as well.

“You started without me. Good,” Thorin smiled, taking the opposite couch. “Have you enjoyed your afternoon?”

“I have, yes,” Bilbo nodded, watching as Thorin leaned forward to start breaking a bread loaf into smaller chunks. “How about you? Business all settled up?”  
Thorin rolled his eyes, dropping the pieces of bread onto a plate with some sort of sauced slices of roast meat.

“You think kingship is going to be all oversight of the forges and plans for expansion, and then you end up spending weeks at a time redrafting trade agreements with Rohan.”

“And tending gardens of your own, I see,” Bilbo said, gesturing at the potted plant, causing Thorin to come as close to blushing as he’d ever seen.

“That,” Thorin said with a sniff, “is not ready yet, and is still a seedling.”

Bilbo actually laughed out at that.

“I wasn’t mocking. It’s impressive that it looks so healthy down here.”

Thorin sniffed again, and changed the subject as he finally seemed satisfied with the plate before him.

“So. I hear tell that you managed to avoid staring death in the face quite so often, this time around.”  
  
And so they spoke, for a long stretch, of the leisurely trip to Rivendell, and the lazy weeks that had been spent there. Bilbo told him of the days he’d spent in the library, even standing to retrieve his pack at one point to show Thorin the bound folio.

Thorin took it, and spent a long few minutes closely studying the workmanship, handing it back with what Bilbo could only describe as an absolutely charmed grin.

“Fond of the elves I may not be, but you would make a fine addition to the craft guilds, kurdu.”  
Bilbo blushed at that himself as he took the book back, not recognizing the Khuzdul word, but smiled back, understanding the compliment for what it was.

“Thank you.”

He seated himself awkwardly, not knowing how to continue. Surely, if they were speaking of Rivendell, Bilbo should bring up everything that had happened.

“I do wonder,” Thorin said, airily, taking the burden of choice from him, “what Bofur said to you to convince you to return.”  
Bilbo took a deep breath, forcing himself not to simply stare down at his dinner plate.

“There is something you should know, yes.”

He could feel the old nervousness overtaking him, then, but forced himself not to panic. Thorin did not try to force him to continue, but his concern at Bilbo’s tone was evident.

“You see, I… Bofur, he is a close friend, and we have written. Over the years. But nothing, you know. Until Yule, which was still… it’s not -”

He took another deep breath, then, and looked pleadingly at Thorin. He couldn’t read the dwarf’s expression quite so easily now, but he did not seem angry.

“Say what you mean to say, please, Bilbo.”

“He… was attempting to convince me to return for you, but it… it also happens that he and I are fond of each other. Maybe not in the same way, but we are.”

It was a long, silent moment that followed, but slowly, Thorin began to nod.

“Does that mean you want no more of me?” he asked, quietly, and Bilbo shook his head.

“No. No, my feelings for you remain very… very much unchanged.”

Thorin nodded again, and asked, the edge of confusion clear in his voice, “And yet, it seems to trouble you.”

Bilbo chose his words carefully before he answered.

“It is… things like this are unusual, where I come from.”

A smile finally found its way back onto Thorin’s lips, and he raised an eyebrow as he nodded.

“There are a great many ways in which your life has already differed from what your upbringing might dictate, and the Shire is not the whole world.”

Thorin stood to walk around the table, and knelt slowly on the floor by Bilbo’s legs, and took Bilbo’s face in his hands.

“You say your feelings are unchanged, and I trust you beyond trust. Your happiness is my happiness, and my feelings are unchanged at the knowledge. Does that put you at ease?”

And it was only then, eight years after they met and seven years after they first kissed, both clear in the knowledge that Thorin was not alone in Bilbo’s heart, that they finally managed to get each other undressed.

===

**Author's Note:**

> My titling skills are, clearly, entirely too creative for my own good.
> 
> This was originally posted a little over a year ago [on my tumblr](http://hoverboardbandit.tumblr.com/post/106857877762/), and though I have further installments planned in draft documents, I can promise nothing.


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